“6.6mag. Taiwan S.Japan location 24º129'N 122º335E 01a.m. UTC April 20. 2015
Four hours ago, a massive 6.6 magnitude Richter earthquake hit coastal Taiwan and Southern Japan. Local agencies, already overburdened with ongoing (nuclear) clean-up, continue to report. Minimal U.S. press coverage—slow to extract reports from the world arena in (western) night-time, unless specifically targeted—may find that differences in international dateline/time-zones may not result in this event’s being buried, It may not fit into a neat, orderly media-orchestrated political schedule.
There are ramifications, however—especially for western U.S.A.
EarthCrisis or Early Warning?
Minimum ‘safe’ height: 146ft—most of Tsunami Alley: sea-level
MAGNITUDE 6.6 mwp
Location / uncertainty 24.129°N 122.335°E± 5.4 km
Depth / uncertainty 28.9 km± 4.4
Origin time 2015-04-20 01:42:58.470 UTC
Source: USGS
Two groups of Native American elders have summoned their communities, in preparation for uprooting and a move inland, away from their traditional ocean-listening posts. In San Luis Obispo county, a small nucleus of Chumash, originally ‘whale-whisperer sea-shell people’from Morro Bay to Malibu—their traditional lodges and burial grounds long-since displaced by ex-pat. Ventura- and Topanga Canyon-ites—have returned to hear “repeated warnings from our cetacean siblings” that we are endangering our homeland.
Washington Tribe prepare for Move to High Ground
The Quileute tribe of La Push, Washington holds a ritual each year, where every woman, man and child in the reservation summons local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species to the community’s beach by playing drums. The tribe’s chief then wades among the animals and interprets their sounds.
Cetacean whisperers help us tune in—use it before we lose it
In 2014, tribal leaders were “summoned” by Pacific Ocean whales, to alert them to a tsunami, ‘soon’ to engulf their community. La Push is located at the intersection of three tectonic plates, prone to earthquakes of nine-point magnitude. The tribe immediately started to make plans to move their community to higher ground. It applied for and received money from both the State of Washington and the federal government, to fund the relocation. Synchronously, assistance has been offered to Quileute elders by Finland’s University of Aalto, in designing their new settlement. In Finland’s Baltic and Arctic Oceans, they are also brother-whale-whisperers.
Wilderness no Longer Wild
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” John Muir
John Muir—progenitor and founder of first U.S. National Park—would be proud of us, his descendants. While he was born in lowland Scotland and thus learned how precious is wild forest floor—Scotland’s indigenous trees mostly eaten by commercial sheep enterprises— un-mangled [by humans] tangled growth. Yet we seem oblivious of our continuing and unrelenting pollution of our only home.
Radioactive Slush
Gallons of slush and ice melt flood Great Lakes and Chicago hinterland.
Combination of Fracking, waste water recycling, human negligence, cause man-made quakes in U.S. central states
Sudden floods in New England, the Carolinas-coastal Virginia cause concern over contaminated drinking water supply. Marinas in Coral Gables, Everglades and Gulf states, Alabama, Louisiana and eastern Texas are revamping water towers last used in Hurricane Katrina, to cope with extra demand. Meanwhile Four Corners, Gila Bend, Arizona, Utah, Nevada—don’t even think of temperatures in Death Valley—and in a geographical spread as far east as Idaho, Kansas and Minnesota, high winds bring risk of grass fires.
Half the country is burning up, while the other half flounders in rising sea levels.
Do we still deny we have a hand in this? Are we pretending we don’t know what’s going on?
Competing for Cleanliest
Last week California Governor Jerry Brown scoffed at Florida governor’s amorous advances for a tourism “exchange”. While organic Californians greatly outnumber Brooklyn retirees in the balmy Everglades and Fort Lauderdale, in ecological terms, neither state can boast a totally clean city.
Echoes from Earth’s Chasms—Ring of Fire Rumbles into Activity
X-Class Solar flares emerging from the ‘hidden’ side of the Sun, add a frisson to so-called normal spring weather. Global extremes have caused great loss of life, however.
There’s more to come.
Triggered by solar CMEs incoming—bombarding Earth’s heat shield to stretching point, dormant volcanoes along subterranean ridges and lava reservoirs of the Ring of Fire are exploding.
Ring of Fire—Seismic Deeps and Ridges of the Pacific Ocean: festering to blow
Sewage and polluted water are high-profile questions that affect the whole human Earth-population.
When the dice are rolled, who gets the blame for leading humanity over the edge of the world——?
Unfortunately for Governor Brown—and for all his supporters south of Sacramento—the WWII-aircraft carrier U.S. Independence has been rediscovered on the ocean floor, in San Diego’s back yard. However supposedly :safely: out of sight, according to U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administrqtion (NOAA) Chief Science officer, James Delgado, the hulk, used for monitoring hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in South Pacific’s Marshall Islands was deliberately sunk off San Diego’s beaches, carrying one hundred barrels of nuclear waste in its hold.
Bikini Atoll: no Place for Bikinis Now
NOAA make light of the rediscovery:
WWII. aircraft carrier, U.S. Independence, scarred in Pacific battle theater
“After 64 years on the seafloor, Independence sits on the bottom as if ready to launch its planes”
J.Delgado, Chief NOAA Science officer
Damaged in WWII, aircraft carrier US Independence found intact April 2015 in Pacific waters carrying nuclear waste
A half-buried metal ship full of discarded nuclear waste is not what U.S.Navy residential retirement community of Coronado needs. Not to mention its hold, stuffed with radioactive bricks, concrete and mortar—’in case of leakage’—lies now exposed to every little rattle emanating from the San Andreas fault and its tributaries stretching south into Baja California. Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills experienced two middle-range quakes last week. Pasadena and San Marino residents live constantly with shaking mantels.
Sentient Earth
In cyclone-hit Philippines, residents live their lives in the shadow of a stratovolcano.
Pinatubo still fuming a century later
Fifty years to the day, volcanic activity around the planet regurgitates ash, debris and detritus from its dormant cone, as if marking the event in EARTH’s calendar, Earth‘s schedule, Earth’s Grand Plan.
Residents of Pinatubo‘s local island Luzon—unlike the cancer-prone residents of Bikini—still recount stories their grandfathers told of wildlife death toll, relocation and readjustment to life under a stratovolcano’s gaze.
Shooting Stars on Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Five years on: NorthAtlantic ridge giant, Eyjafjallajökull, used pyroclastic flows to delay SpaceShuttle Discovery’s reentry to Earth
It is also five years since Iceland’s volcanic-field-cum-ice flow blasted ash and pyroclastic mush into the North Atlantic, delaying the return of NASA’s last space shuttle, Discovery.
Their favorite volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, standing proud in a 33-mile wide lava field, is still smoldering, shooting reminders up into the stratosphere along the fault held loosely by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In case anyone farther afield is listening, Herta, Surtsey are telling us Earth has its own idea of marking anniversaries.
Perhaps we should go along with the conclusion drawn by an old veteran WWII Lancaster bomber navigator friend, who only last week decided to slough off this mortal coil at the youthful age of 95:
Combination of Earth’s silicate core, presence of Iridium and solar flares gives us our weather. It’s the CORIOLIS EFFECT.
Commander (retd.) Sandy (Gogo) Constable, RAF
One of five crop circles in Tlapanaloya, Hidalgo, Mexico last weekend
In the last few years the eyes of the world have been fixed on Crop Circles in the (Northern hemisphere) summer months. The eyes of the world are elsewhere at the moment. So it is not surprising that five crop circles which appeared over last weekend’s Vernal Equinox in two oat fields in Tlapanaloya, 33 miles north of Mexico City were given little media attention. Reuters, the Washington Post and Mexico’s El Universal seemed to be the only news media interested in the phenomenon. They are the first new appearances since the January surprise in Java.
TLAPANALOYA is the old name for this fertile farming region, still tilled and irrigated along indigenous/traditional lines and miraculously spared in Mexico’s headlong drive for industrial ‘revolution’. In its new guise as Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo, Hidalgo, Mexico, it is surrounded by industrial development: several hydro dams, effluent canals, a bauxite-cement works at Cruz Azul, a large military installation, several multi-lane highways (autopista), a national rail line and access roads to feed nationally-supported mineral extraction and mining operations to north and west.
Tlapanaloya lies at latitude 19º52’ N longitude 99º21’W.
Mexican Cordillera L to R: Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatepétl, volcano Malinche, Cofre de Perote and Citlaltépetl
Latitude 19º is significant as the Parallel along which the southern boundary of the North American tectonic plate meets with the Central American plate. Here a line of volcanoes rising to 16,000 feet –the Cordillera de Mexico (or Neovolcanic Ridge)– stretches from the Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is considered an earthquake-prone zone.
Located thirty-three miles north of central Mexico City, Tlapanaloya lies within the closed basin of the ancient Valley of Mexico. At around 7,000 feet, it was the original picturesque Lake District of five lakes, and domain of the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltec and Aztec. The Toltec and Aztec spoke Nahuatl.
The Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico was the Anahuac, meaning the plateau or ‘place between the waters’.
Now those waters are crying out for help.
There were originally five great lakes in this stunningly beautiful setting, hemmed in on all sides by mountain peaks that rise to 16,000 feet. But in the last 200 years successive dams and reservoir construction schemes have funneled and tunneled the waters away from their traditional lakebeds and aquifers. Their clear streams were instead diverted to become waste carriers: ‘effluent’–glorified drains for the population of megalopolis Mexico City–now bursting at the seams with a central population in excess of nine million souls (2010 census 8,851,080, see MCMA, below).
Image of Eagle on Cactus in miraculous growth from Stone: Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the Mendoza codex
Mexico City’s ancient name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan after the Nahua-Aztec tribe, Mexica: it means the ‘co-‘ ‘place of the Mexica among stone cactuses’. In symbolic terms, the image (represented in Mexico’s coat-of-arms and flag) is one of an eagle perched on a cactus which grew from a stone (supreme achievement through the greatest of adversity in environment)
The Rio Tula–the Tula River, from which the nearby industrial town of Tula Allende takes its name–is, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission [Comisión Nacional del Agua de México], one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Tula (Tollan) was the Toltec capital, Tollan-Xicocotitlan in its heyday–AD8th-10thCC (Post-Classic period)*–but suffered brutally under Spanish invasions of 16thC, when its society collapsed.
The Toltec called their capital Tollan, surrounded by natural wetlands–a fertile gift from their Sun-and-star god Quetzalcoatl–Xicocotitlan, the ‘place among the reeds near the home of the wasp/bee’.
The Atlanteans of Tula Grande, basalt figures over 12feet high carved from volcanic rock guard the Toltec Tollan temple to Quetzalcoatl (AD10th-12thCC)
The great Atlantean statues which guarded the temple of serpent-god/Venus-morning-star-Queztalcoatl, prior to Tollan‘s destruction by the Spanish, have been reinstated to stand on their original plinths, rescued from the ignominious ditch where they were found buried–hidden by retreating Toltec from Spanish gaze.
Today Tula and Tlapanaloya reflect Toltec civilization in name only. And even that has changed. Tlapanaloya is now called Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo and Tula is Tula Grande or Tula Allende– a far cry from its original endearing Toltec-Oromi name: Tollan-Xicocotitlan: ‘place of the bumble-bee.’ Implication is that bees flourished in a rich hinterland where agriculture, flowers, and fruit trees blossomed. Much has changed since their culture died.
Popocátepetl, Aztec 'smoking mountain' stands at 17,802feet 33miles S of Mexico City
Coincidentally, 33miles SE of Mexico City stands the stratovolcano Popocatépetl. At 17,802 feet, its massif is also contained within the 19th parallel and its location is within one degree of longitude of the Tlapanaloya crop circles–at 19°1’24″N 98°37’20″W. It erupted last year (2010) and its present rumblings are ongoing. Its eruptions were recorded in Aztec codices and its legendary lahars and pyroclastic flows (mud and ash slides) are seen as a constant threat to Mexico City in modern times–since the city’s massive sprawl has gradually spread into the volcano’s sphere of influence.
FIVE LAKES: how many remain?
Although originally flowing through the wide Tula Valley, which could accommodate its wild seasonal fluctuations, the river was guided by an ingenious 17thC drainage system, itself a replacement for indigenous waterworks built with native stone, which for the previous 500 years supplied the local population with much-needed water in the dry season. The Tula works simultaneously provided essential water for agriculture (as the ancestors had done) and allowed excess floodwaters in the rainy season to channel from the Basin of Mexico into the Gulf. Now–thanks to gigantic 19thC dams and, more damaging to culture and ecosystems, massive bureaucratically-driven hydro-related and industrial concrete construction from 1930s onwards, the Tula River is catchment for what is left of the rivers of the Valley of Mexico basin which originally tumbled out of the five lakes: Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Xaltocan and Zumpango.
Five Great Lakes of (15thC) Valley of Mexico: only one remains and it is dammed
Tula River is part of the Pánuco Hydrologic Region, which has a long history of exploitation for its fresh artesian ground-water. The Tula itself feeds into the Rio Moctezuma which empties into the Pánuco, one mile outside the industrial ports of Tampico/Altamira and Cuidad Madero on the Gulf Coast. Altamira has major industry-standard docks for container-vessel traffic. It is no longer known for its (previous reputation as a) bird sanctuary. Tourist traffic is usually carefully diverted south to the coastal resorts of Vera Cruz or the Yucatan peninsula.
According to data from the National Water Commission of Mexico, the Tula is one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It ‘generates 409.42 million cubic meters of “wastewater” annually.’ Tula River’s pollution stems from this stream’s manmade adaptation as a channel for solid (untreated) human waste along with industrial effluent from both the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, sic), and the ‘industrial zones’ around Tula de Allende.
Lake Texcoco was described in 15thC historical records as a huge natural reservoir–a ‘visual masterpiece’ of mountain-fed streams, wildlife-filled marshes and brackish pools. It was home to the Pelican. Agriculturally-adept and innovative, the native Indios harvested salt from the saltlakes and dammed the ‘sweet-water’ lakes for use in their agricultural terraces (traditional Chinampa ‘gardens’ or small fields). Aztec tradition records that the northern lakes were inaccessible by canoe during the dry season between October and May. When the (summer) rainy season came, Texcoco was known to ‘join up’ with its four sister lakes and canoes were again able to navigate within the lake system.
Lake Texcoco is now dry. The other lakes have gone.
Zumpango Lake (Nahuatl=Tzompantli), the northernmost of the historical lakes in the main basin of the Valley of Mexico, between the towns of Zumpango and Teoloyucan, is the only body of water left of the original five. It lies within 12 miles of the five Equinoctial crop circle formations. It is a manmade version of the original whose boundaries were formed when a canal begun in 1605 started the process of drainage in the Valley, North into the Tula River. It is still home to the 10-meter-deep canyon, the sewage-laden Gran Canal. The original lake has been drained. Only the canal and west drainage tunnel system remain.
Zumpango reservoir has suffered a gradual process of degradation by the presence of industrial operations on its shores and the influx of sewage from Mexico City. The ‘West Issuer’ tunnel, which was originally used exclusively for stormwater drainage, now transports wastewater with a high heavy metal content while increasing tonnage of human waste is discharged into Presa tributaries. Currently, state and local government officially designate it a ‘Water Sanctuary’, but there are no active conservation plans to maintain its high ecological value in the Basin for numerous migratory bird species that take refuge in its waters.
Pelican persevere here. But pollution continues by the local population, compounded by motorized tourism (aquaplaning, outboard motors), and water verges are not maintained. Motor boats disturb avian habitat. Few tourists shown the neighboring solid waste effluent make return visits. At this rate, it is a matter of time before both birds and visitors will have no refuge here.
Formerly part of five legendary lakes that made the Valley beautiful, the name Zumpango is also derived from the Nahuatl meaning ‘the place of the row of skulls’. It was a place of sacred prayer and reverence for the Ancestors. That, too, has gone.
Tourist trajineras on the canals of former lake Xochimilco
The remaining three lakes were drained by settlers from the time of Spanish Conquest, accelerated by subsequent labor, military and government initiatives. The old lakebeds are now almost entirely covered by urban development. One remnant canal at (former Lake) Xochimilco is maintained as a tourist attraction where visitors tour in trajineras (gondolas).
The axolotl, a rare salamander endemic to Lake Chalco, moved house when that Lake was drained, to take up fragile residence near the Canals of its neighboring ‘Lake’ Xochimilco, It is now considered a ‘critically endangered species’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Otherwise, the historic Lake Region is now without lakes.
A whole settlement flooded by the Army in 1931 to form Presa Taxhimay
Tlapanoloya is itself ringed by further waterworks–all artificial. They are called Presas=reservoir, dam.
Presa Escondida at the southern end of the Requena Reservoir, is a small dam 3km N of Tlapanaloya; the Presa Requena Tepeji itself, within the town limits, is a reservoir still frequented by wildlife, including pelican; the Presa Escondida, a dam to the west, is polluted and has no wildlife whatsoever; the Presa Encinillas 5miles distant at Jagüeyes is skirted by six-lane Highway 57 at a busy intersection. It no longer attracts fowl and is polluted by industrial effluent from the Cruz Azul plant. It seems ironic that Highway 57 headed 100 miles NW brings pilgrims to the tiny rancho Chahin at Tlacote near Querétaro. There Señor Jesus Chahin gives away samples of spring water from his own ‘miracle’ well, an artesian supply of unrivalled purity believed to cure all ills.
Back in Tlapanaloya, the largest dam, Presa Taxhimay, formerly Laguna Taxhimay, three miles south of town, is the largest man-made Presa of them all. It was flooded by design in 1931 on the order of General Manuel Avila Camacho. In so doing he completely annihilated the Post-classic, colonial and Spanish settlements of Hacienda Catarina and San Luis Rey, whose church towers remain above the waters of Taxhimay dam surface.
Tlapanaloya Crop Circles in Chinampa ‘Gardens’
Farmer Enrique Hernandez in one of 5 crop circles in his oats in Tlapanaloya
Fortuitously, all five of last weekend’s crop circles appeared in oat meadows still farmed in the Chinampa style–planted and lovingly tended in traditional small rectangular-shaped fields by local Tlapanaloya farmer Enrique Hernandez. He was reported to be mystified by their choice of location but delighted that his crop was not spoiled. On the other hand, if he had been assured that his own way of life and his organically-grown porridge oats–now with their hugely enhanced CC/ET-vibration–were teetering on the edge of extinction, he might feel proud.
It is becoming clear that–whatever one feels about the provenance of crop circles the world over–they do occur in locations which require our attention.
Given that the Tlapanaloya crop circles did NOT contain elaborate interior designs–as are now commonplace in sophisticated annual formations on Salisbury Plain and the fields of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer–it seems a simple intuitive leap from the five Mexican crop circles to a crisis water situation, symbolized by the five extinct Great Lakes of the Basin of Mexico–along with their important historical contribution to this crucial aquifer.
They also occur as part of a triangle of 33: Their point is 33miles N of Mexico City. Also 33 miles NE of the city lies Teotihuacan, where equinox is seriously celebrated each year. And Teotihuacan lies approx.33 miles E of Tlapanaloya.
Equinox sunset over the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Valley of Mexico, March 20, 2011
The crop circles appeared on Equinox weekend when hundreds of thousands of Mexico City residents head for the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan–to pay their respects to the setting sun as it disappears behind the pyramid. Teotihuacan, Toltec ‘place where men become gods’ lies just 33miles east of Enrique’s field. Its central avenue’s due N-S alignment, on which the pyramid’s shadow casts a precise shadow at the moment of dusk, remains today a fascination for Mexicans who traditionally celebrate the onset of spring on Equinox. This year was no exception. Teotihuacan was mobbed.
It was also the weekend before the world-wide celebration of World Water Day, March 22nd.
Water is becoming scarce in many countries with over-population and rising mean annual temperatures. Water will soon be a commodity more precious than the metals mined in the Mexican hinterland.
The present explosion of shanty towns — barrios — which have sprung up in the last decade around the Mexican megacity have bolstered the population of MCMA (see above) to 21 milion people. While canals and drainage systems channel their human waste North into the Valley of Mexico agricultural region centered on (the crop circles of) Tlapanaloya, a clean drinkable water supply continues to be a problem in the city.
Industrial growth within an enclosed basin has not only produced pollutants in smog, but water quality issues for the Valley. Over-extraction of ground water has caused new flooding problems for the city as it sinks below the historic lake floor. Seasonal flooding was thought to have been historically ‘cured’ by the Spanish and successive Mexican governments by the very act of drainage. Now excessive drainage–and extraction of more water than is being replenished naturally causes subsidence and the need for further infrastructure–more pipes and tunnels.
For a high mesa totally enclosed within mountain ranges, the Valley is completely dependent on its groundwater supply. This has traditionally come from the underlying aquifers, the upwelling of seasonal springs supplemented by (previously unwanted) flooding and rains. These underground springs and wells are now almost exclusively the source of drinking water for the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. With the rapid addition of shanty barrios around the city’s outer limits, more water is being pumped out of the city’s underground reservoirs than Nature is pouring in–[main aquifer currently pumps 880,000 USgallons/minute while the water table refreshes at around 440,000 gals/min]–that is, water is replenishing at around half the extraction rate.
Much of the city has now sunk below the ancient lakebed level and it continues to sink at around 15 inches per year. Water from the surrounding mountains which always flowed towards the city, now passes through shanty towns where there are no city ‘services’ (water supply or sewage removal), so the rivers become sewers–which contribute to an ongoing health risk in the capital. MCMA is struggling to prevent this contaminated water from entering the drinking supply.
The present dilemma is specific to Mexico. But in the West, clean and clear water is a blessing and a gift we may not have appreciated enough until now.
All this communicated by a chance appearance in two traditionally-planted-and-irrigated Chinampa fields in a rural district of central Mexico? you ask?
Perhaps not explicitly, but we have had a little experience of messages transmitted in the last decade of crop circles in other areas of the world where aquifers–and their underlying electromagnetic mysteries–have contributed enormously to the medium.
This Mexican Wave may indeed be sending us a High Five: a reminder to reconnect with our traditional lifestyles. But it is more likely to be a distress signal–a wakeup call.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
Perhaps we should go along with the conclusion drawn by an old veteran WWII Lancaster bomber navigator friend, who only last week decided to slough off this mortal coil at the youthful age of 95: 
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